This movie has a lot of problems

Rating: 9/10 (16 May 2014)

I had a lot of problems with this movie. This movie is much more focused on the human characters, and less focused on monster fighting action. I would not have a problem with that at all, but if you are going to have a character driven story, you need to actually DEVELOP YOUR CHARACTERS.
Characters need an arc, they need to be fleshed out and actually grow through the movie, so that we as an audience grow with them and care about them. In this movie, the characters are just cardboard cutouts, none of them are any different at the end than they are at the beginning.
Pacific Rim, a movie which this is obviously compared to, is widely criticized for its lame story and characters. But the characters in Pacific Rim actually are developed and fleshed out, even if the developments are cliché. Mako overcomes her childhood fears, Raliegh overcomes his brother's death, the scientists who are normally adversarial start to work together, etc. The developments were mostly shallow, but the characters were not the focus of the movie, the focus was the action between the robots and kaiju.
In what ways does any character in Godzilla actually grow? Ford thought his dad was crazy, but found out he wasn't... OK. He loves his family and wants to get home. eventually he does... great. Olsen's character loves her husband and son, good for her. The only one having anything approaching a character arc is Cranston's character, but that ends quickly. Do any of these characters learn anything or grow emotionally through out the story? I didn't see it. If you are going to do a character driven drama, you need to actually have real characters. And since they didn't all we have is a 2 hour long movie with about 15 minutes of anything interesting happening.